A problem in the art is that on occasion, the stem of a hip implant breaks. This is extremely painful, and expensive, with a replacement necessary. See, e.g., A. Khanna et al., Priory.com, “Femoral Fracture,” www.priory.com/surgery/Femoral_Fracture.htm.
Carpenter Technology Corporation produces a non-magnetic, cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloy that exhibits high strength, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance, known as BioDur (Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.) CCM Plus (Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.) alloy. Compare, U.S. Pat. No. 5,462,575—which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. A technical datasheet from Carpenter notes that the alloy is a high carbon version of BioDur Carpenter CCM (Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.) alloy and meets the requirements of ASTM F-1537, ASTM F-799, ISO 5832-12 and ISO 5832-4; and that BioDur CCM Plus alloy should be considered as a candidate for use in the orthopedic industry for joint replacement and fracture fixation devices such as total hip, knee, and shoulder replacements, especially when wear or fatigue properties are of major importance or where intricate high strength forgings are required; and for use in producing large forgings where it is difficult to attain ASTM F-799 properties throughout the forging's cross section due to a lack of sufficient thermomechanical processing, with applications having had included hip and knee forgings and machined modular femoral heads for metal-metal and metal-HDPE wear couples.
It would be desirable to ameliorate if not solve the problem of breakage in hip implants, to include in their stems. It would be desirable to provide the art an alternative.